Walk it with the app
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Horta-Guinardó climbs the hills north of the centre. Old Horta was a village of farmhouses and water wells, and nearby is the Laberint d’Horta, the oldest garden in the city, with its cypress maze. Guinardó has the Sant Pau Modernista hospital and hillside parks, and the Turó de la Rovira — a civil-war anti-aircraft battery known as “the bunkers”, with one of the best all-round views of Barcelona.
From the quest: Old Horta: the Village That Water Built
Barcelona's oldest surviving garden, built around a real hedge maze.
Laid out from the 1790s on the estate of the Desvalls family, the Marquises of Alfarràs, this is the oldest garden left in the city: a cool, terraced neoclassical composition of clipped hedges, mythological statues, ponds and pavilions, with an 18th-century cypress maze at its heart. A romantic garden was added in the 19th century, and the whole thing became a public park only in the 1970s.
From the quest: The Heights of Horta-Guinardó
The city's great 360° balcony — an Iron Age hilltop that became a Civil War gun platform.
This is the panorama every other viewpoint in the district is measured against: a full 360 degrees from 262 metres, the sea on one side and the wall of Collserola on the other, the whole of Barcelona laid out between. The concrete platforms underfoot were anti-aircraft gun emplacements built in 1937 to defend the city from bombing, and a small museum among them now tells that story.
From the quest: The Estates of Guinardó
The world's largest Art Nouveau site — a hospital built like a garden city.
Lluís Domènech i Montaner spent nearly three decades turning a hospital into a fantasia of brick, mosaic and stained glass: twenty-seven pavilions set among gardens and linked by underground tunnels, so patients moved unseen while the surface stayed green. It is a UNESCO World Heritage site, and for most visitors the most beautiful building in the whole district.
A small sample. In the app, each stop unlocks when you reach it — with a detail most visitors miss.
Culture & History
Views & Photo Spots
Hidden & Local
Foodie Trail
Pick a quest, follow the compass, check in at each stop. No account needed to start, no ads, no subscription.
